


Devil's Advocate

by levitatethis



Category: Heroes - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-18
Updated: 2010-05-18
Packaged: 2017-10-09 13:14:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/87881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/levitatethis/pseuds/levitatethis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mohinder and Niki have a heart to heart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Devil's Advocate

_“I am covered in skin   
No one gets to come in   
Pull me out from inside   
I am folded and unfolded and unfolding   
I am colourblind.”   
_**-Counting Crowes, _Colourblind _  
**  
Mohinder notices the otherwise masterfully concealed flinch below his lightly feeling fingertips and peering eyes. Pulling his hand back he tilts his head questioningly and asks, “It doesn’t still hurt does it?”

Offering a small yet apologetic smile for the betrayal of a strong facade Niki says, “No—I think it’s what’s referred to as phantom pain. Even though it’s not there I…there are times when I can still feel it burning.”

Mohinder sits back in the chair across from her and looks down at his hands, resting nervously, bashfully, in his lap. “But it’s getting less frequent?” he says, inwardly cringing at the desperate want in his tone that reeks of unfulfilled absolution. It is not his to request so much as he knows her injuries were out of his control, but it is an unforgiving need all the same.

“If you say so Dr. Suresh.”

Niki reaches out her right hand to grasp Mohinder’s left one and he looks up in surprise only to be greeted by her warm eyes. “It doesn’t matter that he showed up,” she says. “I was in that fire long before you would have been mid-flight.”

Mohinder twists his hand around to rework the grasp of their hands with emphasis on his grip over hers, squeezing encouragingly, remorsefully. “If I had gotten there sooner maybe I could have helped your body fend off the permanent scarring.”

“And give up looking like the Phantom of the Opera,” Niki says in mock disbelief bringing her hand back to rest on her chest.

Mohinder grimaces at the remark, and Niki relaxes her shoulders and gives him an amused smile. “Micah’s very creative. He read some book about using humour to deal with _unforeseen negative events_,” Niki places air quote around the end of the statement.

Mohinder sighs and tries to crack a smile that comes out crooked instead. “It doesn’t seem fair that Micah and Molly should be so…_aware_ of such dire circumstances. Many times it’s more than I think I can handle, let alone a child who has had to grow up faster than her peers.”

Briefly holding his concerned eyes Niki scrapes her chair back along the floor and stands up. Mohinder watches her pace about the lab that Isaac Mendez’s loft had been transformed into. She stops nearly on top of the mural depicting an exploding New York that still covers the floor.

“They’re stronger than we realize…maybe it’s because it’s almost everything they’ve known. We’re the lucky ones—or unlucky ones—who remember what it was like before. None of us asked for this,” she says with reservations looking down at it.

“But we still have to try,” he says finishing her thought and returning the tiny smile that Niki tosses over her shoulder.

“Especially since we didn’t ask for it,” she says. Her repetition of a life altering calling beyond their control settles upon Mohinder as if the statement is meant just for him, exemplifying the purpose found in his own journey.

A shift in tension brings an unguarded seriousness in the creasing of Mohinder’s brow and he says, “Though some want it badly enough they’re willing to be part of the destruction.”

Her smile falters. “Like Jessica.”

Too late the realization of what has been unintentionally suggested hits Mohinder and he jumps to his feet with self-admonishment by way of an apology. “I’m sorry—I wasn’t referring to you.”

“That doesn’t make it untrue,” Niki sighs and walks back to him.

“But it wasn’t my intention to lump you in with…”

His voice drifting off in incompletion, Mohinder breaks away from her inquisitive blue eyes to stare at his messy workstation. Focusing on nothing of importance besides the distraction he seeks to draw out in a miscalculated attempt at avoidance he thinks over what he intends to say rather than what ends up being spoken.

“Why not?”

Niki’s unexpected question snaps Mohinder’s attention back to where she has stopped a few feet from him. Her expression is open and blank implying a willingness to hear whatever he has to say, not defensively closed off or regretfully unaware.

Mohinder is unsure how to answer her. When the facts are placed side by side on the table the answer seems obvious but there is something disjointed in the exercise that he cannot put into words. Put on the spot so suddenly the best he can do is stammer, “Well—uh—I—it’s not the same thing,” while he faces the counter filled with slide samples and rests his hands on the edge; gripping firmly then letting go, repeatedly.

He can hear Niki closing in until her presence is quietly announced at his side. “Isn’t it?” she says firmly but with a slight quiver in her words. Catching his eye she turns around and rests her lower back against the counter. She folds her arms across her chest.

Mohinder reaches out his left hand to squeeze her shoulder soothingly, knowing the broken emotion that rushes below her skin, and hears her mutter, “What must you really think of me.”

“Hey,” he says and steps back pulling at her shoulder to force her to look him in the eyes. “You think much worse of yourself than I could ever think of you.”

“But why wouldn’t you think horribly of me?” Niki says. The harshness of her question speeds up Mohinder’s heart in anticipation. “What I’ve done is not so different than Sylar—,”

Mohinder shifts his eyes quickly to the floor and hears Niki say contemplatively, “That is who you’ve been referring to?”

“You’re nothing like him,” Mohinder says under his breath, insistent despite the embarrassment that brings a faint pink hue to his cheeks that she has easily seen what he has worked so hard to hide away. Half a statement and half a wishful opine it does not discourage Niki’s lament.

“Do you know how many people I’ve killed with my hands?” Niki says with the first traces of combativeness in her voice now edgy with anger. She leans into his space. “Why would you see me any differently than you see him?”

Trying to deflect the pointed question with an awkward joke Mohinder says, “Would you prefer I cast skeptical eyes on your every move?”

“I’m being serious Mohinder,” she says, now as exasperated as she is frustrated with is runaround of an issue he desperately wishes to avoid. “Why is dealing with me less of a problem for you?”

Attempting to put the illogical into words Mohinder reflects on the worry he sees in her crinkled and shifting eyes as they search his for an answer he is not fully committed to giving. He runs a restless hand through is hair, scratching his scalp as if to buy some time, before answering.

“You at least feel remorse for what you’ve done Niki. Sylar thrives on the pain he causes because it reminds him of his own power and what he can so ruthlessly and skillfully take from others.”

Seconds pass into each other during which Mohinder’s explanation echoes loudly between them. “_I _feel remorse for what _Jessica’s _done,” Niki says with a thoughtful tone after a momentary pause. “But she feels nothing of the sort. Every act of violence, every murder, I—she—I committed was with intent—,”

“Many times as a defense mechanism for you.”

“How would you…of course, The Company files,” Niki rolls her eyes and leans her left hand palm down on the countertop while placing her right hand on her waist. “I just wonder…if you can look the other way for me why won’t you for him?”

“You want me to ignore everything he’s done and continues to do?” Mohinder says without trying to disguise the surprise in his strained inflection.

“Of course not!” Niki says in a raised voice and he shudders slightly under her stern reprimand. “I’m trying to figure out this distinction you’ve managed to make between him and someone like me—,”

“He killed my father.”

The painful truth spoken so clearly calms Niki’s seemingly relentless interrogation.

“I know,” she finally says with a new softness to her voice. She looks like she is about to add something else before changing her mind. She begins to step away and Mohinder’s nervous curiosity gets the better of him, prompting him to say, “What?”

Her hesitation suggests conflicting thoughts and Niki eyes him before saying, “Ever since you helped me gain access to Jessica’s memories of her…activities…I’ve been wondering about her victims. How many of them had families? People who loved them? Cared for them? They may not have been totally innocent, but how many of us are? Just because you don’t hate me doesn’t mean there isn’t someone out there justified in wanting to put a bullet through my head.”

“I won’t let that happen,” Mohinder says. The honesty of his intended promise is returned in her smile.

“As if you’d have a choice. But I appreciate your quickness to defend me,” she says with a small laugh and then a nod that acknowledges his heartfelt declaration.

“For what it’s worth right?” Mohinder says not shying away from the undeniable shortcomings of his that she is hinting at. “Which isn’t much these days.”

“I could say the same for myself,” says Niki and she rolls her eyes.

“My goodness don’t we sound like the most pathetic pity party,” Mohinder says with the slightest edge of distaste for their mutual wallowing of ineptitude.

The comment calls forth a snort of laughter from Niki. “Oh Mohinder, we’re all so screwed up.”

She carefully pushes an armful of slides and scribbled notations out of the way and jumps up on the counter crossing her right leg over left and sitting barely hunched forward with her hands holding on to the counter’s edge.

“I can’t pretend to know what he’s thinking. For all I know Sylar may be a sociopathic monster, but I’m hardly in a position to cast judgment,” Niki says. “Do you know for certain that he’s—,”

“Beyond being saved or turned around? Yes.”

“That’s not where I was going with this,” Niki says and Mohinder suddenly feels like a child being chastised by his mother for interrupting.

He looks down and clears his throat before saying, “I’m sorry.”

Niki continues, “Can you really write him off so easily?”

Mohinder guesses where her remark is going but does not want to give her ammunition unearned ammunition so soon. It is a testy subject he hast tried to ignore dealing with on his own. Busying himself with work, with Molly, with anything that keeps his mind from settling and going _there_, Mohinder has held the big picture question at a decent length.

“Can you say, without a doubt, that Sylar would kill you here right now if he had the chance?” Niki says.

Mohinder takes in a deep breath at the crucial point she has expertly hit on the head. Sylar’s occasional visits and continued sparing of Mohinder’s life have been a regular topic of gossip discussions in Company hallways and behind closed doors (not to mention a nagging curiosity amongst Peter and Matt). Water-cooler talk, it rarely recounted Mohinder’s oppositional challenge of resistance and the psychological level the defiance added to Sylar and his dealings, but the gist of their encounters was not lost with the omission.

Mohinder steps back and begins to detail a practiced response but Niki quickly cuts him off. “Because Jessica wouldn’t hesitate to snap your neck.”

It is a brutally honest confession that brings a frustrated sadness to Niki’s down-turned eyes and forces Mohinder into defensive mode.

“What do you want me to say?” he says flatly with a murmured sigh at the end of the hopeless question. Spinning around he leans against the counter and looks over his right shoulder at Niki, next to him, watching him closely.

“I don’t want you to say anything,” she says. “I want you to think about how complicated we all are. I don’t like what Jessica’s done but I also know she did it to protect me. I can’t hate her for that.”

“But it’s not the same for him. Sylar doesn’t protect Gabriel; Sylar is Gabriel. Everything he’s done is Gabriel. It’s just the name…”

“But you don’t call him Gabriel.”

Mohinder sighs. “Even though I know he’s Gabriel, calling him Sylar is my reminder that he chooses this life, that he takes pleasure in killing. I remind myself that he is an active participant in his own story.”

“Yet you still don’t know all his reasons or what’s guided his actions. I’m not trying to defend him—,”

“Really?”

Mohinder’s sarcasm brings a playfully annoyed smile to Niki’s face and she jokingly punches him in the arm. “Ow,” Mohinder fake cries and grabs his right bicep with his left hand, dramatically flinching away from her in exaggerated pain.

“As I was saying,” Niki tries to be serious again, “Considering that we know so little about him…”

“Why does it matter to you what I think?” Mohinder says; curiosity surpassing his unwillingness to discuss the confused relationship he unexpectedly shares with Sylar.

“Besides the fact that you’re one of the few people who gets what the hell is going on and wants to help?” Niki says rhetorically.

“Besides that,” Mohinder insists on an answer.

He watches her glance away and unconsciously but nervously rub her left earlobe between the thumb and index finger of her left hand. Her admission is quiet and more for herself than him. “Micah doesn’t know the details of what Jessica did. He knows what she is—I—am capable of, but not what’s actually happened.”

Niki fixes sturdy eyes on Mohinder. “If he knew the truth…”

“He’d still love you, Niki.”

“But it would be different,” she says forlornly and she tilts her face towards the floor and turns down the corners of her mouth. “It would be altered, no matter what my reasons were.”

Mohinder furrows his brow. As much as he feels for her he is still caught up in her implications, her words like a mirror held up to his face insisting that he look. “And if I can be open to all facets of Sylar it will somehow make it okay for you?” he says still feigning some show of confusion for the conundrum he feels suffocating him.

“I don’t know,” Niki says hastily then adjusts her tone to a less antagonistic level. “I…I guess I want—_need_—to know the possibility is there. Because if you could do that for Sylar then Micah…”

He wants to tell her not to pin all her hope on him, not to use him a test case that will only bring her disappointment. Looking down he pretends to note the late time on his watch and walks to his messenger bag lying on the floor by his computer desk. Picking it up he rests it on top of the desk and stuffs random files inside.

“You don’t share a lot of yourself,” Niki says looking at him as she hops off the counter.

Mohinder’s actions slow down but he does not stop. With the last folder put away he folds the front of his bag down and clicks the magnet snaps into place. He briefly looks up to see Niki walking around the lab, her eyes steady on him, and he brings his attention back to slipping the strap of his bag over his shoulders. A cautious, “I made that mistake once—too soon—it won’t happen again,” is all he wills himself to say.

Ignoring his discontented thought Niki approaches him with a newfound confidence in brisk steps and an unwavering gaze. “Maybe it’s your own reasons that should be questioned.”

“Excuse me?” Mohinder says in surprise.

“All that talk about Sylar yet you continue moving under the radar,” she steps in front of him and straightens the collar of his shirt, part of which is caught under the bag’s strap. “You work for people you don’t trust, who’ve hurt many you’ve tried to protect, including me. We both know they had Sylar at one point and there is no way I believe you haven’t sneaked a peek at those files. If what they’ve done to any of us is any indication I can only imagine what they did to him.”

“Niki,” Mohinder says sternly, firmly grabbing her hands from his shirt and pushing them away.

“Someone’s always out for someone,” she goes on with an increasingly authoritative tone. “Someone’s always got to pay the price. None of us is innocent. But you already know that.”

With a fast downward movement Niki rips her hands free of Mohinder’s grip and steps back tossing her hair over her shoulder. Her eyes remain forceful and cold, unblinking. Caught in her stare Mohinder remembers the files he poured over so secretly that detailed Sylar’s time of imprisonment. He thinks about how the killer was tortured repeatedly in the name of science and a callous vengeance over repulsive deeds under The Company’s—Bennet’s—orders. Mohinder does not know what sickens him more: that Sylar was in their custody but not stopped or adequately controlled, or that he was killed and revived continuously like some lab rat Jesus with The Company playing god only to break free and continue his murderous reign.

It is one thing for Mohinder to acknowledge culpability in his life’s unplanned mess it is another to put it on display for other’s to scrutinize. He has worked hard at internalizing demanding ruminations made harder by Matt’s weekly presence and growing ability to get into his head. On the flipside the challenge has made Mohinder more of an expert in passing the human polygraph with little suspicion. With Niki effectively peering into this head through mindful observation, however, he feels vulnerabilities rise up and fights to hold back the overflow.

“Mohinder,” Niki calls out through his distracted reverie.

“Innocence is subjective, I know,” Mohinder say and he hears the unintentionally dismissive edge in his abrupt tone as he turns to walk away. That avoidance and attempt at symbolically protective space is stopped by her extraordinarily strong grip of her right hand around his left bicep.

“Some are more innocent than others?” she says curling up the right corner of her mouth and Mohinder sees the Niki/Jessica dichotomy seeping into one.

“Yes,” he keeps calm trying not to overreact at the potentially problematic situation.

“And you’re the anointed one deciding which category everyone belongs in?” Niki says with an assertiveness that has him instinctively reacting with defensive caution. “What makes you the resident expert?”

As Niki’s eyes simmer into a glare Mohinder knows he needs to tread carefully by not jumping in to retort with fast quips or tensed and cold body language. At the same time his mind is just as split between calming Niki down and sorting out her strong words from his own deep-seated emotional bindings.

“What makes me so different from Sylar that I don’t rate on the same scale—besides the fact that he can collect,” Niki’s says in an insistent tone that does not sound out the worried uncertainty of earlier. Now it is daring and troubling. “Kill for kill, and the skill used, I must pose some challenge to that untouchable status you’ve bestowed on him.”

Wrenching his arm back Mohinder breaks free of Niki and puts his back to her as he crosses the lab and stops to gaze out the window at the city landscape. Clutching the strap of his bag that crosses his chest with his right hand Mohinder breathes deeply. Normally when the occasion arises to think about Sylar—what he has done and what he will still do, what drives such purposeful motivations, what stays his hands or entices him to use his finger as a deadly weapon—Mohinder does not have to concern himself with anyone else trying to decipher his sudden bout of silence as his mind sorts out fact and fiction.

In the quiet of being alone Mohinder allows himself to be broken down and glued back together. Having Niki over his shoulder is like a scratch on a record. She is a glitch, a skip in a song he has played over and over.

If he compares Jessica and Sylar their tally is nearly indistinguishable. On paper there is logic to hating them equally and fearing their wrath in the process. But just like some playground game of rock, paper, scissors, in Mohinder’s life emotion covers logic. Rational rules do not apply, but how does he begin to explain that. Where does he begin with Niki in analyzing and placing annotations that draw attention to the exception he considers Sylar to be?

Being unable to explain it breeds an unfairness that Mohinder is mindful of but he stopped trying to justify it when he found he was going in circles while judging eyes fixated on his. He prefers to only answer to himself. He can be as argumentative, broken, rude or pathetic as he chooses in retaliation to his own conscience. He can be as hopeful, curious, awed and wanting as the voice in the back of his mind whispers frightening promises.

He wills himself around to face Niki who has surprisingly, quietly, closed the distance between them. With a consciously steady voice he says, “Don’t use me and how I deal with Sylar as some guidepost for you.”

The amalgamation of Niki and Jessica smirks, “Why not?” and Mohinder notices her instinctual flexing of fingers as if practicing a chokehold.

“Niki,” he says firmly but she keeps her steady approach on target. “Niki,” he says again with force and a hesitant flinch in her eyes gives way to an awkwardly planted step that puts them toe-to-toe.

Seconds tick by and Mohinder cautiously places a gentle hand on Niki’s shoulder. “Sylar…isn’t meant to make sense. My issues with him are my own just as his…with me are…”

His words come out in an incoherent muddle but as he sees Niki’s tensed shoulders drop and her face soften into wistful interest he reexamines the physical scar on her face that she takes with her. It speaks of fate and bad timing, of the other shoe always dropping. It also speaks of strength and selflessness, when someone else can matter more than thought possible.

“I implore you not to seek out the similarities. You only do yourself a disservice. There’s so much more to you than you realize and Micah will always know that. For all things you think you share in common with Sylar there are still significant differences,” Mohinder shares genuinely and he takes relief in the small smile that settles on her lips.

If he is unsure about the impact of his words it is set aside when she sighs a relieved, “Thank you.”

Smiling back at her Mohinder drops his hand to his side and turns to look out the window again. “You’re right though,” he says.

“About what?” Niki says standing next to him. He lets her question linger unanswered and looks at her. She regards him with a curious smile that quirks up the left corner of her lips then lets her eyes drift to the outside world.

“We’re all screwed up,” Mohinder says with a vexed sadness in his voice.

Letting a few seconds go by Niki turns to him and grins, “But some of us are more screwed up than others?”

Giving her a thoughtful look a broad smile slowly lights up Mohinder’s face ear to ear. “I think that goes without saying,” he says.

Looking back out the window he gazes upon the concrete jungle that lays sprawled before them. Ready and waiting, beckoning from just beyond grasping fingertips, it awaits the next declaration for battle, preparing its counterattack yet willing to take on a new form come what may. To the victors go the spoils.

He steals another glance at Niki who is lost in her own thoughts while she stares out the window. Her eyes are relaxed but pushed smaller under a thoughtfully wrinkled forehead. The shallow breathing that whispers across her lips and lightly bobs her head suggests to him a faster than normal heart rate. Mohinder understands that deeply rooted worry all too well but now he is pleasantly relieved at the lifting of isolation he has felt for so long in the face of the unavoidable.

He redirects his gaze out the window and contemplates the uncertain future that is as open to them as it is impenetrable. It slumbers with one eye open.

 

 


End file.
